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r/feminism on male suicide rate

chluebi

July 28, 2017

56 upvotes

/r/MensRights

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Post Information

Title	r/feminism on male suicide rate
Author	chluebi
Upvotes	56
Comments	16
Date	July 28, 2017 2:32 PM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/6q45qs/rfeminism_on_male_suicide_rate/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/rfeminism-on-male-suicide-rate.916967 https://theredarchive.com/post/916967

Comments

[–]Dembara 26 points27 points28 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]andejoh 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Dembara 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points8 points 8 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points8 points 8 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

I'm not sure what you mean, but I should make a clarification because I see this mistake often, even if you specifically didn't mean it that way. I'm not saying this to insult you or anything, I'm just grabbing the opportunity to say this.

The concept of the "cry for help" is very misunderstood by most people. Many suicide attempts are parasuicidal: This means that the person, either consciously or subconsciously, didn't really intend to kill themselves. For example, a woman may try to overdose with over-the-counter painkillers, which is a very poor method of killing yourself. The pills create an overflow of foam in her stomach, so she ends up vomiting profusely, and is then taken to a hospital. This is what most people call a "cry for help". The problem is, many people regard this kind of behaviour as "fake" or "pretending" or "deceptive". This is a mistake. In most parasuicidal cases, the person is convinced that they wanted to die, even if the steps they took to accomplish that were irrational.

A person's "cry for help" isn't irrelevant or negligible. It's literally that: A cry for help. The person was so overwhelmed and so desperate that they did something extreme in order to receive help. Most psychologists say that this behaviour is the person's ultimate way of communicating to their friends and family how bad their condition is and to urge them to notice. Others say that it's done because they are so alone and dejected that they crave being taken care of, and the doctors in the ER fulfill this need. The cases where someone does this in order to manipulate are extremely rare, and there's usually a pattern of repetitive attention-seeking behaviour.

So, my point is, when you hear of someone making a failed suicide attempt, don't dismiss it as a "cry for help", because that cry for help is very real and may be the precursor of a successful suicide attempt.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Tallsmarthandsome 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

[–]JebberJabber 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]Tallsmarthandsome 3 points4 points5 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Tallsmarthandsome 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]JebberJabber 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

The trans suicide rate might come from coroner's reports on suicides, e.g. by searching on the words "trans" and "gender" then analysing each hit to see whether it was a trans person. That sort of study has been done to investigate the gay suicide rate.

Suicide attempts are very fuzzy but it is not impossible to study them.

There are obvious problems e.g. what gets counted as an attempt by a hospital is extremely dependent on the method, and men's and women's methods differ greatly. So you could compare men's and women's pill attempts, or their hanging attempts, or gun attempts rather than mixing them up and not knowing what you are really measuring.

Trans people do not necessarily behave the same as their target gender either so how to compare them is unknown.

Sampling the whole population avoids some of the huge bias in hospital surveys. This has been done. But again we know men and women can answer the same question differently, and trans people may be different again.

Anecdotal evidence from people with relevant experience can be useful. I can tell you trans (and gay) people seem far more common on our suicide sub than they are in the population, despite having specialist trans and gay subs for support.

So, a bunch of different figures are available and they are all relevant, but you really need to look at how they were measured to understand what they might mean.

[–]phoenix335 7 points8 points9 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]crazypants88 3 points4 points5 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Imnotmrabut 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link